A week of washoku

Some time ago, we realised that we were somewhat cheating at dinner time. While not limited to spagbog, tikka masala or sausage n chips, our cooking was not exactly exciting. Cue the LA Times Book Festival, where Kinokuniya had a stand, and where the top book in the stack above reminded me that Japanese food is not that difficult to prepare, given some practice and preparedness as far as ingredients went. Cue the pulling out of the three other books and much scratching of heads over the ingredient lists. Some of the times we cheated and bought prepared simmered dishes and pickles to supplement the meal, bringing up the dish total to the preferred 5. But some other times, we even "pickled" our own, and were pleasantly surprised we didn't muck it all up.

In no particular order, the results: